No. Just stop it.
Say what you will about judging people’s worth based on their intelligence (I’m all for it!), but stupidity is not a disability. Just stop it. It undermines the fight against real ableism and is, for lack of a better word, asinine.
Yeah. I understand that “moron” and “idiot” are not good things to call people, when what you mean is “ignorant”. I’m not doing that anymore.
But its like, really really hard to talk about someone like Sarah Palin and NOT talk about her intelligence level. I judge her for not being smart, because of the position in society she insists on having, which she clearly doesn’t deserve.
Because she’s just stupid. She thinks she’s very very smart, but she’s got no capacity to think about anything but herself, no capacity to engage in any real way with her critics, she invents her own realities on a regular basis and thinks that makes it okay to ignore the facts, and she honestly thinks that Paul Revere was an NRA member.
Also: George W. Bush. That man is fucking stupid.
Stupid people should acknowledge their lack of intelligence and not go out for public office where intelligence is kind of a job requirement. Forrest Gump might have met the President a ton of times, but he never tried to be the President.
(I am not going to engage in the ableism part here, I have written about this before and now don’t have time to go into it even more)
Sorry but I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea that Palin and Bush are “stupid” (or not intelligent). I believe they are highly skilled individuals who purposefully choose to present a less cultivated persona because they believe it engages their voter base in convenient ways. They use populist tactics to present themselves as “part of the people”, as “simpletons”. They are neither.
We might disagree with them (and gods know how I do) but labeling them “non intelligent” is a disservice. Getting to the level of exposure and media manipulation they both have requires a certain kind of ability, a certain type of intuition, at least. It also requires that the individual in question surrounds themselves with the kind of people who can help advance their political careers. There is nothing “stupid” or “unintelligent” in being able to do that. On the contrary, it requires a kind of media savvy, manipulative approach that most people lack (myself included).
Labeling Bush or Palin as unintelligent is well, just too convenient, there is no nuance in it. They are the kind of people I would describe as dishonest and well, assholes, if I am going to be blunt. But stupid? Oh no. There is a calculated tactic behind this. It is instrumental to being able to present themselves as “victims” of the so called “intellectual elite” that supposedly wants to destroy their good, old fashion values. It’s pandering and demagogic, but stupid? Not by a long shot.
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